


eyes wide (for that glimmer of future)

by Wino



Series: The Darcy fix no one asked for [25]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: BAMF Darcy Lewis, Darcy Lewis Is a Good Bro, Darcy sees the future, Divination, F/F, Friends to Lovers, Friendship, Jane Foster is a Good Bro (Marvel), Seer!Darcy, The Avengers Need a Hug, Women Being Awesome, friends being awesome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-15
Updated: 2021-02-15
Packaged: 2021-03-17 10:26:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,390
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29470161
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wino/pseuds/Wino
Summary: “You cannot be serious,” Erik scoffed, “just throw a coin on the table and be done with it.”“It’s the bones or I go straight to bed, Bosslady,” she loudly announced. And she was going to do it, too. She deserved sleep, and so did they.Or:The Seer Darcy fiction nobody asked for, where Darcy can see the future, Jane wants a croissant, Erik wants sleep and Maria is kind of awkward at flirting.My gift for you all for Friendship day!
Relationships: Clint Barton & Darcy Lewis, Darcy Lewis & Thor, Jane Foster & Darcy Lewis, Maria Hill & Darcy Lewis, Maria Hill/Darcy Lewis
Series: The Darcy fix no one asked for [25]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/703746
Comments: 49
Kudos: 175





	eyes wide (for that glimmer of future)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [anybody who reads this](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=anybody+who+reads+this).



> Guys, It's Friendship Day????  
> How did this happen, one moment it was March and then it's Friendship Day already? Isn't it great?  
> The best day of the year is upon us, and I want to share it. With you!  
> I'm aware that most of you don't celebrate it, but I do, so here it is, 14k words because you all deserve the world and I love you so, so much.  
> Here's a token of my appreciation and love.  
> To my friends online, in real life, the friends I haven't met yet, and those who have outgrown our relationship. You are loved, wanted and missed.  
> Thank you for being in my life. 
> 
> I confess this was not the story I had in mind for Friendship Day. In fact, I'm already 8k words deep into another story, and I wanted to end that one, but then last week I was slapped to death by this idea, and I couldn't put it down for the life of me.   
> I have churned, in the last 3 days, 12k words like a possessed demon.
> 
> I hope you enjoy this, I made it with love, **please leave a comment if you did and make my day.**

“ _A person in your past will enter your life again. Be careful with your love life!”_

Darcy clicked her tongue in annoyance. Well, that was a load of crap anyway.

She’d never put any sort of stock in newspaper horoscopes, but lately, they were becoming both pathetic and supremely unhelpful.

She put the newspaper on top of the pile Jane and Erik had left on the desk, shrugging at Erik’s dubious look.

“What?” she blinked, “I just wanted to read the Aries paragraph.”

“I didn’t peg you for one into horoscopes,” he replied, and Darcy resisted the urge to wince.

Erik didn’t peg her for anything, period. He’d been pretty put out by the notion that Darcy wasn’t an astrophysics student, let alone a hard science altogether. ‘Political Science’ just didn’t cut it for him.

Not that she didn’t like him, she did, she just knew it would be a while before he came around the fact that... well, the only applicant to their little project was somebody who didn’t know anything about it in the first place.

“Well, this one is garbage,” Darcy agreed, “apparently, I’m meeting somebody from my past. Here. In New Mexico.” She raised one eyebrow for the added effect.

Erik scoffed. “Right. Sounds like a stellar prediction. Do you think they meant Izzy at the diner?”

She shrugged. “Maybe? I mean, they were probably making the whole thing up, anyway. They’re paid to make something up every day, can’t fault them for not doing the whole star chart for every single sign by hand. Throwing stuff to the wall and see if something sticks works for most heretics, anyway. They have bills to pay, too.”

The dubious stare was back. “You seem rather… informed… on the subject.”

“Yeeeah,” she laughed awkwardly, “my mother is very into this sort of stuff. She taught me all the tricks!”

“...That’s nice,” he said, and then, thankfully dropped it.

She gave him a tightlipped smile he didn’t notice, and went back to work, in silence.

* * *

In truth, M.me Lewis _the Magnificent_ had made an entire persona around horoscopes, tarot cards and crystal balls. She claimed one of her ancestors had been her teacher and Muse, for she had gotten a manual from one of her great great great something aunts... and thus thought she could make a fortune by wish-washing the whole thing.

She was a complete fraud, if Darcy could say so herself.

Darcy had learned early in her life that whatever her mother was doing was not written anywhere on that Tome.

Why?

Because she’d read the whole damn book.

Her mother had waxed poetics on their ancestor’s ‘magic abilities’, what great Seers they were, how famous and powerful and all things bright and beautiful... to a point where Darcy just wanted to see what the whole hullabaloo was about.

She expected magniloquence, or the same feigned geniality her mother loved to flaunt.

What she’d found were, however, detailed instructions, much like an accurate cookbook.

And honestly? What her mother did with her time was none of her business, but she clearly hadn’t read any of that. She was probably swindling good people out of their hard-earned money.

Because from the moment Darcy Lewis had started following the instructions, she had never stopped seeing the future.

It was both overwhelming and exhilarating, the things she could do.

Forget Tarot readings or séances, Star Charts or pendulums, stuff her mother had forced her to learn for as long as she could remember; true power was in the everyday stuff. As long as you did what you were told to do, you’d get a prediction, no matter the question.

Of course, she’d also learned pretty quickly that relying on the Arts for every little thing was expensive and, for lack of a better word, pointless.

So, young Darcy had put the big guns away by the time High School was over, and had learned to live like every normal person, with horoscopes being the only thing she’d bother to check from time to time.

Now, however, straight-backed into a chair after thirty-seven hours of searching for … _something,_ she was ready to reconsider.

She stretched, yawning over the data she was collating. Again.

Her boss, ‘Please-Call-me-Jane’, had insisted they stay up and compile everything before going to sleep, but it was three in the morning, and she didn’t seem any closer to the end.

No matter how many times they went over it, there was no indication that a readable phenomenon would be coming anywhere close in the foreseeable future.

“Boss lady, it’s quickly nearing Shit o’clock!” she whined. She wasn’t above playing the pity-me-card if needed.

Jane looked much worse than she did, as if caffeine and willpower were the only things keeping her together.

“But Darcy!” she exclaimed, frazzled, “we can’t stop. I’m sure the readings will change, any minute now. There has to be a pattern with these seventeen occurrences! _Seventeen_!”

Darcy wasn’t having any of this, whatever this was. “Jane, reason with me. We’ve been awake for thirty-six hours. We should have stopped this _eighteen hours ago_!”

“We can’t stop. We’re not stopping.”

Darcy’s mouth dropped open. Was she hearing what she was hearing or was she hallucinating? ”Okay, no. This is not going to work, boss-lady. You can’t expect us to stay awake forever waiting for something to happen. You don’t even know when it’ll happen, if at all, at that! We haven’t identified the pattern yet, your theory might be missing some data-”

“Well, there’s no way to know for sure, is there?” Jane snarked, crossing her arms.

Darcy’s mouth, ready to form a cutting reply, snapped closed.

It was probably the lack of sleep, or maybe it was Erik’s face, both exhausted and relieved (about what she didn’t know, possibly about the fact that they _weren’t_ going to be sensible adults...), that made her do this, but she sighed, loudly.

“Okay,” she muttered, “okay. Can we be adults about this, Jane?”

“I am being an adult,” bit down Jane.

“Yeah, no you aren’t,” Darcy said, “but we’ll let it slide. You’re the boss. Let’s put it like this. I’m going to try something, and no matter the outcome, we follow through. Fair?”

Jane blinked. “What? You’re not making sense.”

Darcy covered her face with her hands. “Yeah, I’m not making sense at all. Wait here.”

And without waiting for an answer, she dashed to her room.

* * *

When she came back, Jane and Erik hadn’t moved one inch, not even bothering to hide their confusion. They hadn’t even gone back to work, _nice_.

The bones burned threateningly in their bag, but she wanted to sleep and she wasn’t backing down.

The intern dropped the pink bag on the table, under the watchful eye of her employers.

“So, do you know how Astragals work?”

Jane was nonplussed, but Erik’s look morphed into one of incredulity and disappointment. “Really, Darcy? Knucklebones?”

“Yes, Erik. We’re doing Astragals.” She looked straight into Jane’s eyes. “We launch the bones. If we get a high result, we stay. If we get a low result, we go the fuck to sleep. Deal?”

Jane looked uncertain, her eyes darting to the spectrometer she’d left unattended for five minutes.

“You cannot be serious,” Erik scoffed, “just throw a coin on the table and be done with it.”

“It’s the bones or I go straight to bed, Bosslady,” she loudly announced. And she was going to do it, too. She deserved sleep, and so did they.

They stared at each other for a few seconds, before Jane nodded. “Fine.”

And so Darcy reached into her pouch, willed everything she could muster into the question, and threw them in the air.

_6 - 6 - 4._

She gaped, open-mouthed. “ _Are you fucking kidding me?!_ ”

Jane and Erik bent over the table to stare at the knucklebones. “Is this a good sign?” Jane asked, hopeful.

“It means ‘success after struggles’,” Darcy grumbled, staring at the astragals that had betrayed her so. “We’re staying.”

“Yes!” Jane clapped her hands. “Back to work, then. We have so much to compile, while we wait.”

Darcy shook her head.

Erik sent her a commiserating stare. “You should have just used the coin, kid.”

She scoffed. “And what? Left it to chance?”

“Because this wasn’t? Darcy, I know you’re a sensible girl!” he said.

But before she could explain to him that no, it wasn’t, it was a completely different beast, Jane’s shouts made them jump.

“DARCY, ERIK, IT’S HAPPENING!”

* * *

Despite protests from Selvig, the Knucklebones method soon became the only way Jane would just give up and go to bed without being frogmarched there, if only because they had favoured her the first time.

To please her own ego, Darcy had then decided to catalogue every response of the Astragals, and maybe also to show off to the astrophysicists. A bit. She would consult them every day, and then write down the response. She would then report what they had found at the end of the day.

Erik had been mistrustful at first, then doubting, but in the end, by his wide-eyed look every time Darcy would unfailingly predict the next phenomenon, had to admit the evidence.

“You know that this is impossible, right?” he said to her one day, as Darcy was happily brewing coffee.

She took a deep breath. “I don’t know what more you want, I’ve been predicting your results for two weeks now.”

His cheeks reddened. “I’ve seen it,” he said, “but you have to understand. Predicting the future is not a science, it’s _hardly_ a profession, either! It’s mumbo jumbo, as far as I know.”

“That’s because people don’t know how to do it properly, man,” she patted his shoulder and shrugged. “The frauds you see on TV don’t have an ounce of technique. I told you, most of them just throw stuff at the wall to get their pay.”

“And you do?”

“What? Technique?”

He nodded. “Sure,” she said, sipping on her cup. “I told you, I’ve been taught since I was barely crawling. And yeah, my mother’s the most fraudulent of frauds, possibly, unless she has some power I’ve never discovered- But between us, it’s mostly technique and the ability to get the right items. Like proper coffee. Eugh.” She tossed the swill away. “The filter must have collapsed again. How come most of this stuff is so crappy, seriously?”

“We had to fund most of the equipment ourselves,” Erik answered without thinking, “So you claim that predicting the future is actually possible.”

She nodded. “Well, it’s mostly an expensive practice with limited benefits, really. Astragals are really, really good at answering questions, but if you want something more accurate you’ll need coin, let me tell you.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah, like, crystal balls? That’s where the shit is, but you need them made in a very specific way, and also it needs to be activated with all the right procedures. However, it’s expensive as fuck, and unless you’re trying to suss out the meaning of the universe, you’re better off with a PET bottle.”

He gaped at her. “You’re pulling my leg!”

She really wasn’t. “Nope,” she popped her p. “But as I said, for most stuff Astragals or Tea leaves will be enough. The farther you look, the less you’ll actually understand about what you’re seeing.”

Erik shook his head. “This is all unbelievable, kid.”

Darcy sighed. “Fair enough. Let’s make a deal. You ask me, at any time, and I’ll read your tea leaves. One proper reading. So you can make up your mind.”

He stared at her and then shook his head, chuckling. “Yeah, okay. Sure, the future. Why not.”

Another good thing that came out of writing down the whole data, comparing it to what Jane had gotten out of her thingamabob, was that, at last, they had found out what the pattern was.

The very next day, they started preparing to head out in the desert.

* * *

“I’m just saying, we should maybe, maybe maybe consider _not dying in a storm, today!_ ”

Driving at night? Already a bad idea, but Darcy was used to it, no thanks to her traitorous bones. Lately, they’d been going crazy with the whole sixes and fours, and in response, the astrophysicists plus Darcy were getting better at predicting the next occurrence.

But _three sixes_ in succession? There was no way Jane was letting it go.

However, knucklebones weren’t capable of mentioning a fucking lightning storm!

“I AM NOT DYING FOR SIX COLLEGE CREDITS!” shouted Darcy over the sound of static and thunder.

Jane ignored her.

And promptly ran over a man.

* * *

Thor Odinson was drinking coffee straight from the pot. _Great_.

Darcy tried to feel empathy for the man, he had been run over twice in the span of as many days, had apparently found himself stranded and had some screw loose. However, it was getting kind of hard to feel anything but irritation when she found him strut loudly around the gas station at four in the morning.

Well, that, and some mild incredulity whenever he was going around shirtless, but she was not going there.

“We have mugs for that, Crazy Man I tasered,” she snarked, passing him one while trying to look him straight in the eye and nowhere else.

“You’re up quite early,” he said, pouring the remaining coffee in his mug.

Darcy scrunched her nose. “You’re not exactly quiet, big man. Also, I had to wake up to do my stuff in peace, while Jane sleeps.”

“Aye,” he nodded, “the Lady Jane went to bed really late last night.”

So did she, but she wasn’t about to complain about a bit of alone time where she could get some work done.

She pulled out her copper bowl, her old stones and her knucklebones, just in case she got something wrong and had to try a different method.

Not for the first time, she wished she weren’t a broke college student, to actually be able to afford something nice, like an actual quartz sphere. She had the feeling she’d need it if she wanted to stick with Jane.

She checked the state of the bowl twice, and then ever so slowly filled it with water. Once satisfied, she reached for the round stone.

“What are you doing?”

She jumped.

Thor was standing right behind her, his brows furrowed. For a moment, she had forgotten he was even there.

She shrugged. “It’s nothing,” she tried. “Just something my family does, it’s stupid.”

Thor frowned. “Consulting the Gods is never stupid. 'Tis rare to see people still doing it.”

She blinked. “The Gods? Wait- you know what I’m doing?”

“Aye,” he said, “Midgardians use many rites to consult with the Norns and the Gods. The Vanir were its creators. You called it seidr, but it has changed many a time. Scrying in the water, reading the birds, the entrails of animals. It comes from the same Power within.” He then helped himself to a triangular stone, and dropped it in the part of the bowl that faced North, then followed with a round stone to the South.

Darcy stared.

He knew what he doing. He’d done it before, and enough times that he didn’t even need to check the shape of the stone to put it where it belonged.

“It is not what I’m used to,” he confessed, “but the Old Rites are similar enough that I can manage.”

For all his bluster and boisterous personality, Thor didn’t strike her as a liar.

She watched in silence as he finished setting up the bowl to scry, and then waited patiently for her to do her part.

Her mind started racing as soon as she placed the first pebble.

So, there were two possibilities.

One, and that was Erik’s camp, Thor really had a few marbles lost in the desert, and just believed he was a fallen God from Asgard.

Or two, and this would… well, it would definitely confirm her theory that the shape in the picture was his all along… Thor Odinson did come from Asgard.

She watched his wistful look at the bowl while she finished her part, and sighed. “...Do you want to go first?” she offered. His head whipped up, shocked. “I mean,” she stammered, “we put a lot of stones in here, we probably have enough for two questions? I'll- I'll go make some more coffee, give you some privacy.”

“...Thank you, Lady Darcy.”

She smiled. “No problem, bro.”

Making coffee took her about five minutes, and even if Darcy had been extra slow, for added time wasting, it wasn't long before she was going back in the room. She just hoped she wasn't interrupting anything important, really.

She found him straight-backed on the chair, looking mournful and unsatisfied. The last pebble he should have put in the water nowhere to be seen.

“Is everything alright?” she asked, perplexed.

He shook his head. “I don't think the fates are too pleased with me.”

She frowned. “So it wasn't good news?”

“I received no news.”

She flinched. “That's not possible,” she whispered. In years, not once she hadn't received a vision, a sign, anything at all. It just didn't seem possible. “We must have made a mistake. I'll check the positions again, that's the only thing I can think of.”

Thor shook his head again. “There is no mistake. The Fates won't answer to me.”

Darcy gaped at him. In the low light of dawn, with such a dejected stare and without his usual boldness, he seemed smaller.

She didn't know if it was the Fates, or some God, or something else that answered every time she called, or if it was simply a trick she could do especially well, but...

“Do you want me to scry for you?”

His hopeful look spoke volumes.

* * *

“So, I'm looking for a Hammer,” she repeated. She palmed the cubic stone.

“Yes,” he said, “Mjolnir, my birthright. She was lost on Midgard when I was banished from Asgard. I must find her if I want to return home.”

“Oh-kay,” she shrugged. “Let's look for Mewmew.”

As soon as the stone dropped into the water, the ripples spread, then disappeared, and suddenly, into the bowl there was not water, but the desert.

Her eyes tracked avidly what she was seeing, as her vision took her farther and farther, until she found what had to be... a greenhouse? Plastic tents, one after another, stacked together, circled by trucks and armed thugs. And in the middle, examining a conspicuously placed Hammer, was-

“Hey!” she exclaimed, and the vision blinked out of existence. “That's the man who stole Jane's research!”

* * *

Darcy Lewis was never, in the history of forever, forgetting to read the omens again. Never again.

She'd thought Jane a small magnet for trouble, not a _'catastrophe will follow this woman everywhere'_ one! First it was an alien, then there were four aliens, and _after that_ a fucking Murderbot!

How was this her life now? Because this, make no mistake, was her fucking life now.

And it didn't stop there, oh no, of course it didn't.

She ran for her life with a little dog in her arms, opening all the cages of the pet shop to free as many animals as she could, when she saw it.

As tall as a two stories building, imposing in his metal body, staring straight at her boss and friend.

She hid with the little dog, trying to look as inconspicuous as possible, hoping and praying that Jane and Thor wouldn't do anything stupid.

And then, unbidden, her head spun. For a moment, she witnessed her new friend die, and stay still despite Jane's desperate screams. It all happened so slowly, she could see it in slow motion.

In a second, it was gone, and she could see straight again.

It wasn't even a conscious decision, but something made her drop the little dog and run towards her companions. “THOR! JANE! DUCK!”

* * *

“I want proper tea leaves, Agent Suit, tea leaves!” Darcy cried, again. “And Jane says you've kept her Notebook Number Fifty-Four, and if you don't return it _with the tea,_ the Agent that delivers the bad news will be tasered. Again!”

In a complete one-eighty, because in New Mexico he'd sworn up and down that jack-booted thugs were everything evil and wrong in this world, Erik had gone and accepted a job with SHIELD. Jane had said she wasn't surprised, SHIELD offered better funding, unlimited equipment and tech and was ready to assist Selvig in any way, but Darcy had found her more than once staring at the empty spot in the gas station.

It had been with relief that the two women closed up shop three weeks later and said goodbye to Puente Antiguo.

Of course, because nothing could be easy for them, they'd soon discovered that SHIELD was still keeping tabs on them and still expected their 'cooperation'.

Was Darcy going to milk this to the very last drop of Agent Coulson's patience or until they let them be for good? Yes, yes she was.

“Miss Lewis,” Coulson sighed, exasperated, at the other end of the phone, “you can't possibly expect SHIELD to pay for your culinary exploits. You've marked the shipment as 'essential', and since you are not English, tea is hardly essential.”

She scoffed. “I'm not asking for caviar, Coulson, it's tea leaves.”

“We're responsible only for Doctor Foster's expenses _on a budget_ , Miss Lewis, not for _her tea breaks, nor your esoteric practices._ Especially those.”

She fought a twitch in her eye. She'd give him esoteric when they met in person. “Nobody cares about what you think is esoteric, Coulson. I still haven't forgotten you conveniently lost my iPod... And I couldn't help but notice that what you lost looked suspiciously like the one Agent Arms had when you brought our stuff back to Culver. Give Jane her notebook, and get me my tea, or so help me I'm calling the emergency numbers so many times you'll wish you were on a-”

“Miss Lewis,” Agent blew air from his nose, which could have been either a chortle or a sound of dying in agony, but she wasn't going to ask, “don't threaten us, we have ways to fix these kinds of complaints. However, you have made your point, if only by tiring me down. We'll see what we can do. For _one shipment.”_

Darcy didn't bother biting down the smile. “Loose leaves? And Jane's notebook?”

“...And Foster's notebook, yes.”

“Why, thank you. I knew you were a reasonable one!”

Coulson didn't bother to reply, he just hung up.

But true to his words, Jane's notebook and the smallest, saddest shipment of loose tea leaves arrived within the next two days.

The agent who had delivered them, dressed in jeans and leather jacket, smiled politely at Darcy when she held the package, and excused herself in less than thirty seconds, disappearing around the corner faster than Jane could say “My baby!”.

Things seemed to settle down somewhat, if only because they didn't hear anything from the suits again.

They heard from Erik every once in a while, but he was getting more and more cagey about what they were actually doing at the base, and so their conversations were getting more awkward and stilted.

Darcy kept watching his star chart every week, just because, her Knucklebones in her bag, always at the ready.

* * *

She could say it was a day like any other, but she would be lying.

There was no other way to properly describe the feeling of suffocation that woke her up. The stickiness of her skin, the air that wouldn't enter her lungs.

For the life of her, she couldn't remember the dream, but she wished she had something, anything to explain the displacement she was feeling right now.

She resisted the urge to throw her Astragals, and decided to make herself useful and get to work before midday.

It wasn't to be.

Every traffic light was red, every disturbance was happening at the same time, from the radio going static or the cars bottle-necking at every intersection, and before her eyes, a man on a bike decided to fall just in front of her van.

“Thor's Tits!” she screamed, scrambling out of her seat. “Are you okay?”

The young man didn't seem too hurt, but he wasn't really looking at her, either. He was staring behind her shoulder, as if he were seeing things.

She snapped her fingers at him and he focused back on her. “Are you okay?” she repeated. Loss of focus meant a concussion, right? But he hadn't hit his head at all...

He nodded. “Yeah, sure. Sorry, I lost my balance.”

She blinked. Usually, bikers weren't so understanding about _almost dying under a vehicle._ But the guy looked okay, and already he was getting back on his bike.

“You sure you're alright?”

“Depends,” he said, his eyes quickly glancing behind her once again, “are you seeing what I'm seeing?”

She turned.

She barely noticed the guy leaving in the opposite direction, or the people who had started to point.

Birds.

Hundreds and hundreds of birds, flying like mosquitoes in a swamp, too close to the ground to be comfortable. In desperate flocks, they flew through the roofs of the city like bats out of hell. Some of them, in their haste to get away from whatever was happening, crashed against street signals, traffic lights, the power cables.

It was surreal.

One thing was for sure, Darcy decided, she wasn't staying to see what had scared so many creatures out of their skin.

She locked the van doors, put on the seat-belt because she wasn't risking it, and pulled into the road she'd abandoned before. She ignored everything and everyone around her, her tunnel vision coming to her aid for once. She was ten minutes from Culver, she could make it.

She was almost there, when it happened.

With a smashing sound, so abrupt she slammed on the brakes and almost activated her airbag, a dead bird fell on her windshield.

Darcy screamed.

* * *

Jane was expecting her in the parking lot, which was saying something if even she had noticed and had abandoned her experiments.

“Darcy!” she exclaimed as soon as Darcy parked the car, dead bird still on the windshield. “Are-oh my God, is that a dead bird?”

Darcy's lips moved, but no sound came out. She cleared her throat, hoping to dislodge what was keeping her voice from working, but it was no use.

Jane looked at her, and she had probably seen something on her face, because she stopped mid-question. She just opened her arms, and hugged her friend.

“Let's go inside, you need a blanket and something strong to drink.”

* * *

When Jane had said 'something strong' Darcy had, frankly, expected alcohol.

Instead, Jane had decided to make a strong cup of tea, which was very English of her, but also very not what Darcy needed right now.

“It's so weird, what's happening, isn't it?” Jane was saying, sipping her own cup. “Did you see all the birds?”

“Yeah, Jane,” Darcy snapped, “one of them decided to die on my car.”

Jane winced. “Right. Sorry. That- that was rotten luck. I mean, what are the odds?”

What were the odds, indeed? Actually, now that Darcy thought about it, today had been a constant beating the odds of the weirdness wheel. It was almost like the universe was telling her the world was going to the dogs.

She blinked and turned to Jane. Maybe the world was going to shit.

Jane took a long sip of her cup, and with a jolt, Darcy _got it_.

“Jane, is this the Tea we got from SHIELD?”

Jane looked at her with embarrassment. “I mean, yes? I thought we'd need something stronger than prepackaged teabags- don't look at me like that!”

Darcy shushed her with a hand and stared her down with determination. “Drink it.”

“-What?”

“Drink it all, Jane, do it. I need to see the tea leaves. Boss lady, drink.”

It was a testament to how much Jane trusted her, because her boss didn't even blink before taking another long gulp of the beverage, swallowing. She smiled awkwardly and offered Darcy the empty cup.

Darcy nodded, her mind running miles a second. “Okay, now. Slowly, rotate your cup three times. Slowly, or I'll make you drink another.”

Jane obediently did so. “Now, the contents on the cup. Drain the cup, use the saucer.”

Her friend didn't even finish doing it that Darcy was already snatching it, peering feverishly at the tea leaves.

She gasped. “Pack everything up, Jane. We're leaving. Now. I'll call SHIELD.”

A sickle, in the middle of the cup, was the only symbol visible.

* * *

As it turned out, Coulson had tired of them.

Or something along these lines. Because when Darcy called the usual number, it was a decidedly feminine (hot) voice that answered the phone.

“Hill speaking.”

Darcy fought the urge to blush, shook herself and took a fortifying breath. “I need to speak to Coulson. This is Darcy Lewis on behalf of Doctor Foster, we need evac.”

The voice on the other side was suddenly all business, sending chills down her spine. “What happened? Where are you? There was no suspicious movement near you.”

Darcy exhaled. “We're at Culver. We're in a fucking Hitchcock movie or something. Birds are all over the place, but that's not important. Something huge is going to happen. If we don't leave, Jan-Doctor Foster won't survive the next 48 hours.”

A sharp gasp came from behind her. “I WILL WHAT?!”

Darcy winced. Now it wasn't the time. “Shhh, boss lady. I'm trying to explain it!”

The voice didn't waver. “What is happening, Miss Lewis?”

“Where is Coulson?” she asked. _Coward._

“He's been sent on a mission, Miss Lewis. You're talking to the Deputy Director of SHIELD.”

_Oh, shit._

Darcy's eyes widened in disbelief, and a part of her was both grateful and mad at Coulson. The rational part of her brain was telling her that it had been... nice of him to give the contact to somebody so high up the food chain in SHIELD that could actually be of help, but the lizard part of it was screaming that he'd done it on purpose to finally shut her up.

If she annoyed the Deputy Director, she would be probably be disappeared in some remote island or ditch in the ground. She gulped.

Now came the difficult part. If Coulson had been humouring her so far, there was no way this woman was going to listen to her if she screwed it up.

“Listen, please, I know it sounds batty, but I've seen omens of death since this morning. I've almost run over a guy, the birds- There are birds everywhere, one of them died on my windshield! And- I've checked Jane's tea leaves, Mr- Miss? Ms Hill? Who- There's death in the cap, Ma'am. Death. She's going to die if we don't run now!”

There was silence on the other side of the phone, followed by a delicate sigh, and in that moment, Darcy knew she'd blown it.

“Miss Lewis,” said Hill, with a patient voice that screamed patronizing, “we've checked your location. The bird phenomenon, I'll give you, was unusual, but they've scattered in the last ten minutes. Nothing is wron-”

“IT WAS A WARNING!” Darcy screamed on the phone. Beside her, Jane jumped again.

“A warning of what?” said the voice, now torn between incredulity and annoyance.

“Death!”

“Miss Lewis-”

But Darcy heard something different. Like that time in New Mexico, images danced in front of her face. And for just a moment, she wasn't at Culver anymore. She gasped, and vomited on the floor.

“DARCY!” shouted Jane.

“Miss Lewis?!?!” Hill was back to her serious voice.

Darcy coughed. Her mouth tasted terrible, but she paid it no mind. She straightened her back. “I'm fine. Ma'am. Please, just this once, give me three seconds. Something is coming. Something huge. There was- a man. There's a man, with antlers on his head, and he's got- he's got a Scepter. He's coming for Thor. He's coming for Coulson. He's coming for Jane. I've seen death, there's death in her future. Either you help us get away, or we'll run on our own, tonight. But tell us now, because, for the life of me, I'm not going to see my best friend die. Not like this.”

A beat, and then two, passed. Darcy held her breath.

Then Hill sighed. “Coulson did tell me you have a flair for dramatics.”

“Does that work in your profession?” Darcy bit out.

She heard some sort of breath. “Sometimes. Very well, be ready in an hour, we'll send you somewhere safe.”

Darcy slumped in relief. “Thank you, thank you so much!”

“I'm not done,” Hill interrupted her. “Needless to say, Miss Lewis, we do not appreciate this kind of browbeating. This will be the last time I accept this pitiful excuses. Is there anything else?”

Darcy resisted the urge to send her somewhere where the sun didn't shine. “No, thank you. I'm- I wish I could say I was sorry, but I'm really, really not.”

Hill sighed. “Of course you're not. Good Day, Miss Lewis.”

* * *

Two days later, New York and Stark's Tower exploded in an alien invasion, and the city was almost nuked to the ground.

* * *

The weather in Tromso was awfully cold.

The sun never set, ever, and still Darcy couldn't get used to the difference in temperature. She could appreciate, however, the calm and silence that came with being in the middle of, well, _nothing at all._

It gave Darcy time to think, while Jane complained that there was not a single star in the sky.

After all, while the first time she had suffered from sudden vertigo could have been shrugged off as an accident, there was no mistake that, without her control whatsoever, she had somehow foreseen Loki's arrival.

She had never seen the man, never met the man, had no way of imagining he was coming to Earth.

She had seen danger, a scythe was the symbol of Mortal Peril, there was no mistaking that for a Death Tarot Card, but the vision she had … it had been oddly specific. Too specific, in fact.

Was there something wrong with her?

She had, against her judgment, called her mother to ask about the journal, and had received the expected answer that no, the Magnificent madame Lewis wasn't sharing, unless Darcy was suddenly interested in the family business, which... no.

Thus, Darcy concluded, that the only person who could actually help her was Thor.

Thor who had left Midgard _again, without even bothering to visit Jane._

To say that the mere mention of the Asgardian still set Jane's teeth grinding was an understatement, so Darcy stayed silent, because Jane was her very best friend and if Jane was mad at her boyfriend, then so was she.

It didn't really help with her situation, though.

Her Astragals kept offering a meek 4-1-6 or 4-4-1 every time she asked, an unsatisfactory albeit polite confusion leaking from every question.

She groaned, pressing her hands to her face.

This was her life, now. Ugh.

She practised her smile once or twice in front of the mirror, declared it passable enough for somebody whose internal clock was fucked by the constant sunlight, and resigned herself to another dull day with Jane. Maybe they could make sushi together... Thor knew they had frozen fish stocked _for months_.

Of course, not even ten minutes into breakfast, somebody knocked at their door. Their very remote door into the middle of butt-fuck nowhere.

Darcy and Jane looked at each other. Darcy grabbed her bag, always on the couch, and pulled out her taser. “Hide!” she mouthed to Jane, who nodded and lowered herself to the ground.

“Who is it?” Darcy called, getting closer to the door.

“Darcy Lewis? It's us, SHIELD!” a manly voice called from behind the door. Yes. Right. It was exactly what a kidnapper would have said.

“Right. Sure. What's the password, man?” she clicked her tongue. Shouldn't agents at least try to be professional?

“The password?” the man sounded confused. Darcy pointed her taser to the door.

There was silence, and then shuffling, and a smacking sound, and another knock.

“Miss Lewis?” Darcy frowned. She recognized this voice. It kind of sounded like Hill, but she couldn't be sure.

“Yes?” she repeated. The taser wasn't lowered.

“There's a lot of fish in my van,” maybe-Hill said, and Darcy relaxed. “It's Deputy Director Maria Hill, Miss Lewis. We spoke on the phone.”

“Yeah, sure, that checks,” she breathed, gesturing to Jane the all-clear. “I'll need an ID, though, I've never seen you in person.”

There was a sigh, followed by some more shuffling. “Miss Lewis.”

“Fine!” she sighed. She unlocked the door. “Come in.”

The woman looked... tired. It didn't hide the complete stunner she was, with her dark hair and lashes and blue eyes and the long legs and _'get a Grip, Darcy!',_ but her makeup couldn't hide the bags under her eyes and some of the dark spots on her face. Her left brow looked scarred, with recently removed stitches.

“Miss Lewis,” she nodded, making her way in, alone. The second Agent was nowhere to be seen.

“Deputy Director Maria Hill,” Darcy nodded back. “We finally meet.”

“Indeed,” she said. “Doctor Foster.” Jane waved. Hill placed herself in front of the couch, facing them both. “We've come to take you home.”

Jane blinked. “To Culver? Is it safe now?”

Hill nodded. “Yes, Loki and Thor have left the planet,” she ignored Jane's twitch and Darcy's aborted sigh, “so it's no longer necessary for you to hide. Culver might not be safe for you, but Stark has offered you a place at his Tower. It's the safest place we can offer you, even if that means you will no longer be under SHIELD's watch.”

If this was somehow trying to undersell the arrangement, it was failing. No Culver traffic and no SHIELD? It sounded heavenly to Darcy's ears!

Jane frowned. “My funds?”

Hill sighed. “I'm sure Stark will insist on funding most of it, but you'll have to discuss it with him, I am not his secretary.”

“You're Fury's,” whispered Darcy.

The dark look Hill sent her way made her smile awkwardly. Ops.

“I'm also here for unofficial business,” Hill continued. She put herself in front of Darcy, so close she was almost into her personal space, and the intern was struck at just how tall this woman was. Hill took a deep breath. “I wanted to apologize, Miss Lewis.”

Darcy gaped. “...What?”

“When you called me, frankly, I thought you were joking or trying to bargain for a paid vacation. Coulson told me this is not the first time it happened with you, but it is clear that I was in the wrong in not listening. I don't know how you did it, but your call saved one of our agents last month, and we will not forget it. For this, my sincerest apologies.”

Darcy's mouth dropped open. If Hill were any more formal, she'd probably be bowing or something.

She looked at Jane, nonplussed. This was absurd.

“Uhm, no problem? I mean, I'm still pissed at you all, but I'm not stupid. I know how unlikely my stories are and ooh boy do I wish I had an explanation for you!”

Hill nodded. “SHIELD would be very interested in your talents, Miss Lewis.”

Darcy vehemently shook her head. “Yeah, no, nice try. I mean, if Coulson needs a favour, maaaaybe, because he's been okay lately and he's sent me tea? But no, I'm not going to work for any secret organization in this life, or the next.”

The woman didn't seem put out by her response. Actually, she didn't even look like she was trying very hard, which was fine by Darcy.

“How's Erik?” asked Jane timidly, “and Coulson?”

Hill sighed. “Coulson will live. The fact that we knew Loki was going after him made him wear more armour, and more caution. His wounds were mostly superficial. Doctor Selvig is... worse for wear. However, the medics say he'll make a full recovery,” she added, smiling a bit. It almost looked foreign on such a tired face.

“That's- that's good,” said Jane.

The room fell into an awkward silence.

Darcy cleared her throat. “Should we pack?”

Hill nodded, relieved. “Please do, we're leaving as soon as possible.” And she left.

Darcy turned to Jane and tried to smile a bit. “So... are you ready to see some stars again?”

* * *

Avengers Tower was... not what Darcy had expected.

Well, no, she had expected the huge tower, the floor to ceiling windows, the superlab Jane wouldn't be able to afford unless she somehow won the Lottery.

What she had not seen coming - which, in hindsight, sounded extremely funny to her - was the company. As in, actually having to socialize.

She entered the lab with a spring in her step, the copper teapot firmly in her hands.

Stark was already leaving.

She'd wagered the Avengers would have no time to spare with them, at all, maybe with Jane because she was a genius and all, but that really hadn't been the case.

Tony Stark wanted to have conversations with them, to _'get to know each other, if you know what I mean'_ he'd said, and quickly his really outgoing personality had managed to not only win Darcy over, but also Jane.

That wasn't to say they were best friends, but they kind of clicked together. Until they started talking science, in that case, they got on either like a house on fire, or water and oil.

He winked at her on his way out.

“And I'm going to show you, Foster!” Tony screamed, his head poking through the door, “we'll get you a state of the art system your intern won't be able to compete with!”

“You can certainly try!” Jane called after him, huffing.

“What was that about?” Darcy asked.

Jane waved her hand in dismissal. “Just Tony being Tony, Darce. He saw our notebooks and had a conniption, I think. Said he wanted to drag us to the twenty-first century.”

“Huh,” said Darcy. “I like our pen and paper system. What's wrong with it?”

“Exactly!” Jane nodded. She glanced at the teapot. “Teatime?”

“Indeed, boss lady. You know it.”

* * *

Darcy Lewis yawned. Her cellphone clock said 3.30 am, but her brain could only compute 'shit o’clock', and it wasn't helping. “JARVIS?”

“Yes, Miss Lewis?” The disembodied voice of the Tower's butler and factotum resonated in her room.

“Is the common room free for use or did Doctor Banner's experiments try to take over again?” She felt like it was a legitimate question. Last week Tony's bots had tried to take over the labs, so she was just waiting for hyperactive mould or space ninjas in the TV room.

“Yes, Miss Lewis. The kitchen and the common room are free for use, and Sir is in bed,” he added, for good measure.

“Great, thanks, J!” she smiled up at him. “You're the best assistant.”

“I try my best, Miss Lewis.” His dry voice didn't change, but Darcy knew she was his favourite, too.

She padded as quietly as she could from the apartment she shared with Jane to the lower floor, lest she bother somebody else. Usually, people slept at 3,30 in the morning. And Steve had super hearing, he probably heard everything. Tony had told her there were two more Avengers that doubled as SHIELD operatives, but she'd barely caught tail of the Black Widow in the month she'd been here, so really, they were probably less concerned about her than she was of them.

And for a good reason, too.

JARVIS dutifully turned on the lights of the kitchen and started the coffee pot, which filled the room with the sacred smell of coffee, truly the drink of the gods.

Darcy put the rocks on the table, the bowl and then filled it with water.

It had been some time since she'd last consulted the water, but, she figured, now was a good time as any.

She set all the stones in silence, mindful to be careful with the triangular ones, and then took a deep breath.

This was it. She was going to find out about her strange flashes. When she'd realized she could just have... asked the stones, or the Gods as Thor had put it, she had almost smacked her head. How stupid could she be, forgetting about her skill? Well, she wasn't going to dwell on it any longer. Today she was getting answers.

She swallowed and dropped the round stone in the water.

Nothing.

She blinked once, twice, but the water remained unchanged.

She took a deep breath, and tried again.

Nothing happened.

The surface of the bowl, which had shown her many visions, always answered her call when summoned, had chosen her over Thor in Puente Antiguo, had nothing to say to her.

Impossible.

Her hands trembled as she reached for her Astragals and asked the same question. She launched the first. 3. The second and third soon followed. 3-3-3. 3-4-1.

Darcy's eyes widened.

Two non-committal results were unlikely, unless the Fates really had nothing to say to her.

She frowned, clicking her tongue in annoyance. “Keep your secrets, then. See if I care.”

But she did, and both she and the knucklebones knew it.

* * *

Her traitorous knucklebones were now relegated to emergency jail, Darcy decided that same morning, and so was her copper bowl. Who needed water scrying when you could drink said water?

Yes, she was still salty about it.

However, life went on, Jane or the Science Bros didn't explode anything in over two weeks, and she didn't have any nightmares, so Darcy took the stubborn silence about her condition in stride and came to the conclusion that if the gods didn't care, so wouldn't she.

“Why are you always drinking tea, Doctor Foster?” was asking Doctor Banner, one evening.

Jane took the last sip and smiled. “To humour my intern, really.” She deftly avoided Darcy's grabby hands.

Darcy pouted. “Come on, boss-lady. Just give me the cup already!”

She was becoming insufferable about it, lately. Drinking ever so slowly to just rile her up.

Banner watched with polite confusion as the petite scientist just sighed, rotated her cup and handed it to Darcy.

The intern smiled gleefully and checked it over. She winced. “Oof. So, Jane-” she hedged.

Jane paled. “Don't tell me it's something deadly again.”

Darcy shook her head quickly, “no no no, you're fine. Just. How mad are you at Thor-bro? Asking for a friend.”

Jane's left eye twitched. “A lot. Why?”

Darcy shrugged innocently. “I guess you can get some screaming done this weekend, then.”

Jane rose to her feet. “He's coming here?!”

“Yup.” Darcy popped the p for added effect. “And soon, too, the symbols are pretty close to the middle of the cup. I'd say... 24 hours, top.”

“That's- great,” Jane pursed her lips. “Just great. Just you wait until he's here.”

Darcy met Banner's eyes and smiled. “You might want to hide your valuable stuff, because Jane can pack a punch if she wants.”

Doctor Banner looked nonplussed. “I'm sorry?”

Darcy sighed. “Thor's coming here, to the tower? She has a bone to pick with him. And she'll scream, a lot. But, like, you've met Thor, he's basically invulnerable, so the only thing we need to worry about is collateral damage.”

He nodded. “Yes, that I gathered, I'm just curious about. Well, Tasseomancy? Really?” he smiled hesitantly, as if he was afraid of saying the wrong thing.

Darcy unconsciously stiffened. “Yes.”

He opened his mouth, but Jane interrupted him before he could speak. “She's amazing at it, Doctor Banner! I didn't believe it myself, but she's a real wizard! She's saved my life! And it's so useful to know what's coming in advance, you know?”

His smile didn't waver, but the eyes told another story. “I'm sure. I just thought it was a very, nebulous art.”

Darcy scoffed. “It sure is, if you're a moron.” She was kind of done with having the same conversation over and over.

Doctor Banner didn't seem offended. He just shrugged. “You're right. That's a fair point. I turn into a huge green monster, future sight is not something that should be outside the realm of reality, too.” His smile widened a bit more, showing off his dimples. “Would you like to predict my future, too?”

Darcy smiled at him, more genuinely. “Thank you.”

* * *

As predicted, Thor arrived the next day. And _left_ the same day.

Not predicted, was the presence of somebody else in the Tower.

“Sir?” started JARVIS, “Deputy Director Maria Hill is requesting access to the Avengers quarters.”

She came that same evening, when everybody was relaxing in the TV room and even the spies were belly up on the couch.

The not dying by invasion had done her good, Darcy noticed. She looked more at ease, less tired, and even the cut on her brow had healed nicely.

“Hill!” Stark called out. “Coming for the TV? We're still picking out a movie!”

She gave him a tight-lipped smile. “I'm afraid this is not a social call, Mr Stark. I'm here on behalf of SHIELD.”

At once, Barton and Romanoff were on their feet. “Status report?”

Hill coughed. “Actually... I need Miss Lewis.”

Was it possible to be swallowed by a whole couch? In this moment, Darcy hoped she could find out.

* * *

“You could have called, Deputy Director,” Darcy joked. In truth, any excuse was good to procrastinate.

“You have a tendency of not responding to any of our calls, Miss Lewis,” Hill deadpanned. “Even the anonymous ones, or the ones from public phones. Or the ones from your own contacts.”

“Good to know you're still using that old tactic,” she mirthfully said. “How's that working for you?”

“Yes well,” Hill cleared her throat. “I'm here now.”

“Indeed. Don't worry, I'll give you another contact, I'll answer that one if it's you. Probably. Welcome to my humble abode, courtesy of Tony Stark!” It was technically her office, but if the scientists behaved and the bots were nowhere to be perceived, it almost looked professional. “So, what can I do for you, Deputy Director Hill?”

“...Hill will do,” Hill produced a file from her jacket, “this is sensitive information that won't leave this room, right?”

Darcy nodded. “Of course.”

“Right, Barton?” Hill raised her voice meaningfully and stared unblinking at the vent in the wall..

Darcy's head snapped up and followed her eyes. “Are you fucking kidding me?”

There was a scraping sound, and Darcy watched incredulously as Clint Flying Rat Barton dropped out of the ventilation system, as if nothing was happening, followed by Natasha Romanoff.

Hill groaned. “I can't deal with you two, today.”

“Relax, Hill!” Barton said cheerily. “We just wanted to see what you wanted from Darcy, here. You're not going to disappear her, are you?” The last part was said with a pinch of apprehension, as if Clint was calculating whether the young woman could fit into the vent to run for it.

“We're not disposing of Lewis, Barton,” snapped Hill. “I just thought she could help us with a job, that's all.”

“How?” asked Romanoff.

“Guys?” Darcy coughed. “Please back off? I really appreciate the whole- protection shtick you're pulling, but Ms Hill was talking and if we're fast we can still watch the movie?”

The spies backed away, albeit very little, making the office look even smaller.

“As I was saying,” Hill continued, “this is what we have. The name is Togliani, we think from the Italian mafia. He's been seen with some AIM higher-ups, which wouldn't be worrying in itself, weren't for the fact that AIM has started developing some sort of new technology they're about to market to the public. However, since that last sighting, Togliani has vanished into thin air. Nothing near his house, nothing from his relatives. Gone.”

Darcy wrinkled her nose. “That's not what I imagined I'd be doing for SHIELD. Nor what I thought SHIELD did. Mafia? That sounds underwhelming for SHIELD, haven't the vigilantes in New York been fixing that, lately?”

Hill clicked her tongue. “Yes, but that's not the point. Can you do it?”

“Find him? Sure, I think? Fair warning, my copper bowl is in traitor jail, it has misbehaved, but I can give it a shot.”

She saw Clint mouth 'what' at Natasha and her shrug, she could feel the disbelief coming in waves from them. She started setting her business up, hyper-aware of the three stares at the back of her neck. “If you look at me any harder I will either drop dead or ask you to pay dinner,” she huffed.

Clint chuckled.

“So,” she sat down at the chair, round stone in her hand, “you need a location?”

Hill nodded. “If possible. I'll take any lead at this point.”

Darcy nodded and dropped the stone.

Immediately, the bowl lit up, and her mind was taken far, far away. It was dark, and cold, and yet, she could see the traces of burned earth and scorched wood.

“I see the woods,” she narrated, her eyes dilating, trying to catch every little detail. “There's a lot of charred ground. He's not in the city anymore, he's-” she sucked in a breath. “I think he's dead.”

The water in the bowl stopped vibrating, and she took a deep breath. “I think he blew up?”

* * *

Hill didn't stay long after that, promising that she'd check the coordinates Darcy had given her, but decidedly not happy one of her few leads was apparently dead.

Barton and Romanoff were another can of worms.

Romanoff 'call me Natasha' had been suitably impressed, but Barton. Oh, Barton had the shit-eating grin of somebody who'd just told him Christmas had come and had brought his birthday along for the ride.

“So... psychic?” he had waggled his eyebrows.

“Nah, just good at making stuff work.” Darcy had shrugged. It wasn't a lie, she was making her old ancestor's tricks work for her, no matter what her mind could do or not. As long as you followed the recipe, it would do its job.

“I see, I see,” he'd said.

He did not see, of course. And she knew that, because from then on he'd been on his personal mission from Hell, namely trying to surprise her at any moment, be it appearing from the vents unannounced or coming from behind.

It wasn't anything serious, but after the fourth time in a day, and thirtieth in a fortnight, it was seriously starting to grate on her nerves.

So, she went straight to Natasha about it.

“How do I get him to back off?”

Natasha turned to her. “I'm sorry?”

“Natasha, you know exactly what I'm talking about,” Darcy said, “how do I stop Clint? He's making my nerves fray! He almost startled me out of a ritual this morning, I can't work like this!”

Natasha frowned. “He's not a mean man, Darcy. He just wanted to test you a bit. He has been escalating, though, and that's not acceptable.”

Darcy's eye twitched. “Test me? He's been trying to scare me! That's not testing me. By the way, I'm still waiting for you to add your teacup to the table, if you want. I'm already reading Doctor Banner's, Jane's, Tony's and Pepper's, one more won't make a difference to me. But really, give me a hint here, please, or else I'll have to resort to nuclear warfare!”

Natasha snorted. “It's Clint, nuclear warfare is probably the best you can do with him. He's thick.”

“I noticed,” the intern said.

“I could talk to him, if you wanted.”

“Nah it's fine,” she replied. “Nuclear weapon it is.”

* * *

Nuclear warfare meant one, and only one thing. The PET bottle.

Now, hydromancy was a technique Darcy had used regularly with her stones in the bowl, but you could consult the Fates only for so long before a pebble became a pebble until it recharged, so if you needed one quick glance, you were probably better off with a clear container filled with water. And while back in the day you could only rely on glass, PET bottles were nowadays easily bought.

So, Clint wanted serious? Darcy could do serious.

She set an alert on her phone, shook the bottle to check it was working, and she was ready.

Every time she thought the room was too silent, or the phone vibrated, she would shake the bottle, gently. Clint's whereabouts would show up within a second or two.

From then on, it was war.

Whenever he tried to startle her, she would turn around and greet him, she'd always know when he was in the vents and wave at him.

“Hi, Clint!” she'd excitedly exclaim, watching him scramble back into the ventilation system.

Ah, sweet, sweet revenge.

“Aren't you exaggerating?” Jane asked her one day.

“No. He started it.”

And so it went, with Clint stepping up his game to nerf darts, and Darcy updating her phone alert from every 20 minutes to every 10.

“Miss Lewis, Deputy Director Hill is asking for you.”

“Great!” Darcy said, “I'll be right there, thank you, J.”

* * *

“I've come with updates, Miss Lewis.” Maria Hill went straight to business, “we have found the site you've pointed us, and yes, we were able to verify the remains as Togliani.”

“Ouch.”

“Quite,” said Hill. “Now, it may seem presumptuous of us, but-”

Darcy's cellphone pinged. She jumped. “Excuse me,” she said. She pulled out the bottle and shook it vigorously. According to the water, Clint was somewhere in the upper floor, nerf gun in hand, but was descending quickly.

She had to act now. “Would you mind giving me a minute, Ms Hill? I'll be but a moment.”

Hill blinked. “What?”

But Darcy was already focused on the timing. She took out her own nerf gun from under the desk, slowly unscrewed the little vent door, and stood in wait.

As soon as she heard the tell-tale sound of the drop, she fired.

“OW!” Clint whined.

Darcy laughed. “Victory is mine, Agent arms!” she shouted into the void.

He didn't answer her, but she didn't expect him to. In fact, she already could hear him making his way down.

She whirled around and air pumped in satisfaction, only to remember that she wasn't alone in her office and that she was in the company of a hyper-competent woman who really didn't need to see this.

She coughed. “Sorry. It's his fault.”

Hill's mouth was slightly open, but to her credit, she recovered very quickly. “You'll find that when Barton is involved, it usually is his fault,” she nodded.

Darcy nodded solemnly back. “Indeed.”

The conversation stalled.

“Uhm... did you need anything else?” Darcy asked.

Hill's spine stiffened. “No, nothing else. Good day, then, Miss Lewis.”

Darcy watched her go. “Hey, you can call me Darcy, you know?”

Hill made a vague gesture of acknowledgement, and she was gone.

Darcy frowned. _What was that about? She could have just called..._

* * *

Winter was fast approaching, and with that Tony started to migrate towards his villa in Malibu, and with him went the bots.

Bruce had opted to stay in the Tower, while the spies were somewhere on a mission.

Before they left, Darcy had put her foot down and demanded they all get a reading before daring to leave. The last time somebody had left without her knowing, Jane had almost been kidnapped, snatched in the middle of a crowded street.

So, with alacrity, she inspected every teacup, star chart and water surface she could get her hands on.

Clint and Natasha were mostly clear, but Tony's cup had a very threatening Cross at the border of the cup.

“It means trouble brewing, Tony,” she shook her head, “are you sure you want to be alone? We can

come with you? Pepper is hardly ever around, and so is Happy. It's not a good sign!”

“Oh, come on, Double D!” he smiled charmingly at her, “I'll be fine! I'm Iron Man, and I have my armour, and Rhodey is close by, in case anything happened!”

“If you're sure...” Darcy relented.

He left soon after that, and for the first time in months, Darcy and Jane were almost completely alone.

The silence in the Tower without its loudest inhabitants had quickly become oppressive to Darcy. Her worry about Tony didn't abate one bit, especially after the first Mandarin bomb strikes. Trouble wasn't just brewing, it was ready to become chaos.

And then Tony's Malibu house exploded.

And Darcy's phone started ringing.

“Darcy speaking.”

“Darcy, it's Maria, we need your help.”

* * *

'Help' didn't mean much, when Tony fucking Stark was involved.

She had barely the time to check on him and find Pepper, that already he was solving all his problems on his own. She almost felt bad she had gained first-name basis with Maria Hill without doing anything.

Almost.

It was seriously anticlimactic, but she contented herself into bringing fresh flowers to Pepper in her hospital room and keeping the Tower fed while Tony recovered from surgery.

And boy, had that been a surprise. Did anybody else in the Tower know about his whole magnet in his heart thingamabob? Because she felt like this was kind of important and she should have been warned!

But because this was in the past, she couldn't find it in her to be actually mad at him.

They were fine, and healing, and it was prospecting to be a very happy New Year indeed.

So, it was with good cheer and one or two drinks in her system that when Tony announced a party for mid-January, to celebrate his recovery, she didn't think twice about inviting Maria Hill.

* * *

She said yes.

* * *

“Natasha, Jane! It's the end of the world!” she wailed the next day at breakfast, “I messed up!”

Natasha looked perfect at every hour of the day and of the night, but Jane only managed a grunt before shaking herself awake. “What? Darcy, what?”

“I need help,” Darcy replied.

“Tell me the name, I'll be your alibi for when they're reported missing.” said Natasha, nodding.

“Wha- thank you,” said Darcy, touched, “but that's not what I meant! I might have _askedMariaouttotheparty._ ”

“...What?”

“I might have asked Maria out. To the party. Tony's party!” Darcy repeated, hotly.

Her friends just gaped for a second before chuckling.

“It's not funny!”

“It isn't,” Natasha agreed, despite her lips twitching again.

Jane broke into full-blown laughter.

“Traitor!” Darcy gasped. How dare she laugh at her misery.

“Oh, lighten up, Darcy!” Jane said, “you've been looking at Hill for a while now. Besides, you're on first-name basis now, or not?”

“Yeah, we are,” Darcy grouched, “and of course the first thing I do is ask her out. What happened to friends first?”

Natasha shrugged. “It doesn't have to mean anything, Darcy. Did you tell her it was a date-date?”

Darcy thought hard about it. The memories were kind of hazy there, she didn't really mesh well with alcohol. “I don't think so?”

“There you go, then,” Natasha smiled. “Go out with Maria, have fun. Enjoy the evening. You're not asking her to marry you, it can just be drinks with friends. Easy.”

“Natasha's right, Darcy,” said Jane. “Besides, I'm pretty sure Tony has something spectacular in mind that will give none of us any privacy whatsoever.”

Darcy mulled it over. They were making good points there. There was no way Tony would leave her alone in a corner all evening, and there were plenty of friends at the party. They could just keep it casual.

“You're right. I should enjoy the evening. Thanks.”

What could possibly go wrong?

* * *

Everything. The answer was everything.

Natasha's guess that Tony had plans for the evening had been... accurate.

From the moment Maria had stepped into the Tower, Tony had been positively insufferable with excitement. And yes, 'we survived yet another crazy megalomaniac' was a perfectly acceptable reason to celebrate, but the situation was quickly escalating into 'going overboard'. Way over the top.

There were a lot more people she had imagined, for one. Wasn't the Tower super restricted to those without a pass?

The music was loud, but that wasn't surprising. Nothing Tony Stark did was ever _not_ loud.

Soon enough, she was growing bored with having to shout for Maria to hear her, and she was just done with the flashing lights. The drinks were excellent, though.

“Do you want to get out of here?” Maria asked her at one point, trying to balance her drink as somebody nudged her from behind.

“Please!” she yelled emphatically over the music.

The penthouse was on the top floor, but because of that it had a relatively small balcony and Tony’s landing pad, which was not the ideal place to relax, but Tony was at the party and there were no attacks going on, so Darcy didn’t really care at this point.

“Thank you for the invite,” Maria started.

Darcy blushed. “No problem. I mean, sorry, I meant that I was very surprised you accepted it, I thought you worked like, every day and night, like a vampire.” She laughed awkwardly and took another sip of her drink.

“I kind of do,” admitted Maria. “But this is my first date since… last year? So I thought I’d take the evening off.”

Darcy choked on her drink. “Right. A date.”

Maria’s eyes sharpened and she stiffened. “Wasn’t it a date? The message wasn’t very clear so I just assumed. I must have misunderstood.”

Darcy shook her head quickly, so quickly her drink sloshed dangerously in her grip. “No, no no. It … kind of was? It was totally meant to be a date, but I was kind of drunk when I sent you the invite, and I totally didn’t want to assume, so I thought ‘oh well, we’ll just have drinks and pretend it’s not a date’ but I would like it. To be. A date, I mean. If you want to…?”

Maria relaxed. “Well, we can’t possibly call it a date now, can we?”

Darcy agreed, despite not being very happy with the outcome. “Nope.”

Maria nodded. “I guess we’ll just have to go and get coffee sometime next week.” And she smiled.

“Of course!” Darcy smiled back.

* * *

And one coffee became two, and then movie night, and before Darcy knew she and Maria were going steady. Jane was very adamant she should give Maria 'a serious talk', too, which both vexed and pleased her. She could take care of herself, thank you very much, and yet she couldn't help to appreciate her friend for standing up for her.

Was it too childish to send cute memes to your girlfriend, the vice boss of a super-secret organization? Possibly.

Darcy hit send with unrestrained glee.

Her cellphone lit up one second later, with an answering meme.

“Are you sending cute messages to my boss?” Clint appeared behind her. She was so used to it by now, that he wouldn't be able to startle her even if he were trying to.

“Maybe?” she shrugged.

“Cool. She's going to send me to Guatemala while she sends you cute cat pictures.”

Darcy snorted. “There's not a single cat in these memes.” It was true, she'd learned soon enough that Maria was a dog person through and through.

“Really? That's disappointing,” he pouted.

Darcy smiled. “Trade you one dog meme for Pizza dog picture?”

He went for his phone with no hesitation. “Sure!”

* * *

Darcy had always been a pretty heavy sleeper, but when that night she woke up from Nightmares three times, and the next time she woke up she had somehow missed the time for her morning ritual, a _nd it was over 10 am_ , she was on high alert straight away.

Jane was nowhere to be seen in her lab, but that wasn't that unusual.

She went looking for her in the kitchen, and found nobody. Huh. It was normally more crowded in there, what with Tony having no real circadian rhythm and Clint and Natasha working at the oddest times.

She glanced at the table, where the guys had dutifully left their empty cups, like they did every morning.

She inspected each one of them absent-mindedly, wiping them as she went. The first few had the usual array of non-threatening symbols, typical of the spy and Avenger life. 'Enemy Hidden' and 'Unexpected danger' was always routine with them.

She took the last cup and gave it a perfunctory scan, and promptly choked on her spit.

A dagger, with a noose, in the middle of the cup. Not one, but two marks of danger, one on top of the other.

“JARVIS!” she called, alarmed, “whose cup was this??”

“The cup was Doctor Foster's, Miss Lewis.” The disembodied voice answered right away.

Darcy stiffened from head to toe. Cold ice coursed through her veins and her stomach dropped so low she could feel it in her feet. Her palms were sweaty and her mouth suddenly felt like cotton and lead.

“Where is Jane, JARVIS?” she whispered.

“Doctor Foster went out for an errand, Miss Lewis,” he said. He then added, “your parameters are altered, Miss Lewis, you should sit down.”

Darcy dropped on a chair, only to stand up a second later. “Call Jane, JARVIS. Now.”

“Calling Doctor Foster.”

The sound of ringing echoed in the empty kitchen.

Once.

Twice.

Five times.

“No response,” JARVIS said.

“Try again!” Darcy yelled. She was pacing now, her teeth worrying her thumb, almost breaking the nail. “Call her again until she answers, JARVIS.”

JARVIS tried, again and again, and nothing happened.

Where was she?

Her ears were buzzing with the sound of static, her tongue clicking repeatedly.

“Apologies, Miss Lewis,” said JARVIS, “but I cannot reach Doctor Foster.”

Darcy took a deep breath, and then another. “Look at the security cameras, find her. And call everyone, something's happened.”

She started typing the now familiar number before she could even think about it. “Maria, Jane's gone!”

* * *

Let it be said, here and now, that whoever had taken Jane was going to die. Painfully.

As soon as the Avengers understood the situation, every one of them dropped what they were doing and converged at the Tower.

Tony had started commandeering JARVIS, while everybody else was on high alert, ready for anything.

Darcy could only watch and cry.

How did it come to this? She didn't understand, she'd only missed one morning, just this one! How had they taken her the only day she wasn't checking? How?!

She hugged her knees, small in the armchair and surrounded by superpowered individuals all around her. She idly wondered if she'd always feel like this, useless whenever accidents cropped up? Was this the extent of her usefulness?

The thought brought a fresh wave of tears to her eyes, and she sobbed.

A warm hand squeezed her shoulder supportingly.

She raised her head to see Maria, bending slightly to meet her eye to eye. The woman crouched a bit more. “Don't worry, Darcy, we'll find her,” she hugged her tightly. “It'll be alright.”

Darcy buried her face into Maria's shoulder. She tried to be positive, she really did, but it wouldn't come right. “Yeah, we will...”

“We will!” said Tony, eyes never leaving the screen. “JARVIS has found the unmarked van, they snatched her right in front of a bakery, the bastards.”

“How did they know when to snatch her?” asked Clint, perched on a chair. Natasha was in a similar position, they looked like overstuffed balcony pigeons, with their legs on the armrests.

“We're checking the cameras for feedback, but it looks like they've been camping around the Tower for a while now.”

“...And how was nobody informed?!” asked Hill, incredulously.

“Aren't you the ones supposedly surveilling us, Hill?” snapped Tony, and that shut her up.

He wasn't wrong, Darcy thought, SHIELD was pretty much a staple in their lives. There was always an agent disguised as a passer-by, or a beggar, just lurking around the Tower.

Natasha and Darcy had made a game out of trying to spot the spy, a game Darcy lost more often than not if she didn't use her tricks.

“This was work done by professionals,” said Steve. “They took her with none of us noticing and left no trace. They ran for it and not even the cameras are capable of following their tail. They knew what they were doing, they acted quickly and if it weren't for Darcy no one would have known.”

At the mention of her name, Darcy startled. “What?”

“It's true,” confirmed Maria, “if you hadn't noticed, we wouldn't have until at least lunchtime, if not dinner. They could have gotten much further.”

“Not that it helps any,” grouched Darcy, “we still don't know if she's even alive! They didn't call for a ransom, shouldn't they call for one?”

But they all knew there would be no ransom for Jane Foster. Whoever had taken her and dragged her into a black van was not interested in Tony's money. They wanted her brain and knowledge.

“She's alive alright,” Natasha said. “They'd need more than a couple of hours to get Jane to talk, and even if she did, it would take even longer to use her for their plots. We have time.”

“But how much time?”

Natasha shrugged.

Darcy wanted to scream.

It was almost midday, Jane had been gone for hours.

Her phone pinged with her Barton alert, and she resisted the urge to slam it against the wall. The useless thing could remind her to 'hydrate', and couldn't bother waking her up in the morning?

“Don't break your phone, Darcy,” she muttered to herself.

“Break your phone, Lewis,” said Tony, “I'll just get you a new Starkphone.”

He shrugged at the stares of his friends. “What? If launching that prehistoric thing at the wall will help her exorcise her demons or find her groove back, let her do it. I mean, six months ago I destroyed over fifty suits of armour. Cathartic.”

“This doesn't help us find Foster,” said Maria. “Her phone was ringing, you said. Does she have the GPS activated? What about a tracker?”

“We're not used to tracking our friends, Hill,” answered Steve.

Darcy agreed, she had been very vocal about not having trackers on her own phone, but just about now, she'd kill for an... _easy- way to- find her friend?_

Her vision swam in front of her.

Jane, bound to a chair, in a dimly lit room.

And behind her, was a man as jacked as Steve, with a metal arm.

Suddenly, Maria's embrace was suffocating. She struggled against it, and Maria barely had time to let her go before Darcy emptied her stomach all over Tony's marble floor, gasping for air.

When she could raise her head again, trying to preserve as much dignity as she could, she was the centre of attention.

“Are you alright, Lewis?” Tony's eyebrows were reaching his hairline.

Maria's hands went back to her shoulders, uncaring of the state Darcy was in. “What did you see, Darcy? Was it Jane?”

Darcy nodded. “She's bound to a chair. There- There's a man with her!” she said, trembling from head to toe. “He- he looks as big as Steve, and, you won't believe this, but _he has a fucking metal arm_!”

A chair scraped the floor.

Natasha was standing very close to her all of a sudden. “Repeat that. A metal arm?”

“Yes, yes! Does it ring familiar?”

Natasha nodded, her face stormy. “Yes. It does. Tell me more.”

But Darcy shook her head. “I can't! That's all I saw! Jane, in a room, on a chair, with the man behind her. I can't ask the Water, my PET bottle is useless if I don't know what I'm looking for! I don't know who took her, I barely know what the man looks like, he's got a mask!” Her shoulders slumped. “I'm sorry.”

“Can you try again?” asked Steve.

Darcy frowned. “Maybe? I don't know, I've always used the same three techniques, these are proven to work. Unless Tony has like, fifteen diamonds he'd like me to have...”

“I do,” said Tony. “Unless you need them the size of your fist, that is. That could take me some time to get... What? Why are you staring at me?”

* * *

Lithomancy, in absence of a rock crystal that could work as a focus, was a hazy practice at best.

Her ancestor had warned the reader of the book about the wildly different results one could get from different stones, depending on the size and impurities present in the material used. There was no way to make a perfectly transparent stone without some modicum of luck, and diamonds were expensive.

Of course, her ancestor had never conceived the existence of one Tony Stark.

Without hesitation, he had procured her in five minutes what her grand grand grand whatever would have given both arms for.

“Now, I warn you,” she said to her friends, clustered around her, “this is the first time I do this, I cannot guarantee results.”

“We know,” Maria said, “but we know you can do it. Just try, Darcy!”

The young woman nodded, took a deep breath, and shuffled the stones around.

Darcy had never been inside the Triskelion.

She'd seen it in pictures, on the internet, or from very, very far, but she'd never been invited in, so to speak.

It was... intimidating.

Agents, swarms of armed Agents everywhere she looked or she moved.

She frowned. “Guys, why am I at SHIELD's Headquarters?”

There was a sharp intake of breath somewhere behind her, but she couldn't look away. She moved a diamond, and the vision changed.

She was going up, up up to the top floor, even higher than Fury's office. “What's above Fury's office, guys?” she asked.

“That would be Pierce's office,” said Maria.

“Huh.”

And then she was falling, deep in the bowels of the Triskelion, down into a section labelled STRIKE and into a maze of corridors.

And then, the masked man and Jane, in the room.

She relayed anything she could, breathless. “There's another man in the room now. Old. He's wearing a suit. He's talking to Jane”

She described him as she watched.

“What are they saying? Can you hear them?”

“That's not how it works. I can't read lips!” she snapped.

She watched as the man slapped his masked minion, and then advanced on Jane.

“Jane, no!” she screamed.

The vision ended.

When her eyes regained focus, the room was sombre with silence.

“So,” Tony clapped his hands. “Who was betting on SHIELD? Because I sure as fuck wasn't, but now I wish I were.”

* * *

“In my next life, you're teaching me self-defence, guys.”

She heard Clint snort on the comm, before Natasha interrupted his retort. “Self-defence wouldn't be enough here, Darcy. If Pierce and STRIKE are involved, there's not much a trained civilian could do.”

She had to give Natasha that, certainly.

“Is this why I was left home, Romanoff?” whined Stark.

“No,” said Hill, “you're home because you're Iron Man, and definitely not welcome at SHIELD. Romanoff, Barton, Rogers and I _work here_ , Stark.” If she sounded any smugger, she'd be boasting, but Maria was above that.

“We're going inside,” whispered Steve. “We'll keep radio silence unless there's an emergency. Darcy,” he addressed her, “we'll get Jane back, don't worry.”

Darcy nodded, even though she knew he couldn't see her. “Be safe, too, you guys. That man looked really, really dangerous.”

“Of course,” they said, and everything went silent.

Tony groaned. “Remind me to invent a secret minicamera or something, this wait is going to kill me.”

“A mini camera?” she asked sceptically.

“Sure,” he said, “nanotech is on the rise, I should probably invest in that.”

* * *

If asked to recount the following few hours, Darcy wouldn't have been able to do it.

She was vaguely aware of what was happening, from Tony trying to coax her into a card game, to JARVIS telling them that the entirety of SHIELD was actually a front for Hydra, to Natasha telling them that Steve had a personal pickle with the masked man, to Maria _getting almost shot_.

It was a blur from then on.

Nothing made sense anymore, did it? The good guys were actually the bad guys all along, they'd all been tricked into believing an organization that was probably dead, Fury was spitting fire and Stark looked as lost as she felt.

She just felt... numb.

But Natasha was unloading every secret file she could put her hands on into the internet, and they had to hide the sensitive ones before the public found out.

“Come on, Lewis,” Tony said, moving her in front of a console. “I'll teach you how to remove files from the Internet, JARVIS will be your guide.”

She clicked her tongue, shaking herself. “I know how to do it, old man. I've hacked into the DMV, once.” Or twice. Or more.

“Oh, là là,” he pretended to be impressed, “a woman of culture, I see. Let's get this done, so you can go back to smooching your girlfriend.”

“Says the one whose girlfriend has him completely whipped.”

“Pepper doesn't- You know what? Fair.”

* * *

“You were almost shot!”

“I'm fine!”

“ _You were almost shot!”_ Darcy repeated.

She was standing against the medbay wall, staring down at her girlfriend as the medic tried to patch her up.

“Almost is the keyword there, Darcy,” Maria said patiently, “I was very far from the action, didn't take unnecessary risks and the STRIKE goons that tried to come at me are worse off than I am. Honestly, you should see Steve. He's got at least three busted ribs!”

And hadn't _that_ been a surprise? Steve was reckless, but he usually had the brains and the brawns to back his low impulse control. This time, however, he had met his foil in his childhood friend Bucky Barnes. Darcy tried not to think about it too much, lest she tried to resurrect Pierce to tase him into unconsciousness over and over again.

The fact that he and most of his Agents were dead still left a sour taste in her mouth. How dare they take the easy way out.

“What happens now?” she asked. She glanced quickly at the sleeping body of Jane, on the adjacent bed. Poor Jane, it was a miracle she hadn't been hurt worse.

Maria shrugged. “Now the world will demand answers, we'll be summoned in front of Congress, the NSA, any organization that had a modicum of cooperation with SHIELD, Fury will boss more people around and vanish, and I'll look for a new job.”

“You don't look worried,” Darcy pointed out.

“Politicians are big babies, Fury will have it covered,” Maria said nonchalantly, “if you ask Natasha, she'll tell you how regimes rise and fall every day. I've seen worse.”

“That's a glib declaration to make.”

Maria took her hand and Darcy squeezed it. “We're all safe, you're safe, Jane is going to be fine. Can't get much better than this, now can it?”

Darcy smiled. “Yeah, all things considered.”

“Besides, I think I'd make a great assistant, or waitress, don't you think?”

Darcy snorted. “You? A waitress? With your history of violence?”

“You're right, that's not me. What about nightclub bouncer?” Maria winked at her.

Before she could reply, however, Tony's voice was heard from the door. “If it's a job in security you're looking for, Hill, maybe I can help.”

* * *

Time passed and Darcy could almost say she could get used to this band of idiots forever.

Steve had brought home a friend, Sam, and was now seen gallivanting with him, Natasha and Bucky all over the world looking for hidden HYDRA bases.

Clint and pizza dog were now almost always on base, when he wasn't home with Laura.

Thor was in space, because Space, apparently, and that still irked Jane tremendously. Whenever he came back, Darcy was going to _grill him_. Possibly with her taser.

“It's not that serious, Darcy,” Jane reminded her, “he's busy.”

“Yes, it is that serious!” Darcy contradicted her, “if Maria started prancing around the universe without a single call or a postcard I'd kick her to the curb! She can stay outside and think about her mistakes!”

“...What did I do?” Maria poked her head through the door.

“Maria! Come in, come in!” said Jane amicably.

“We were talking about Thor, actually,” grouched Darcy. “I said that Jane should kick him out. If I went incommunicado with you for years and barely called and didn't bother seeing you ever, would you stick with me?”

Maria clicked her tongue. “I'd dump you.”

“See?” Darcy exclaimed. “Even my always working girlfriend and love of my life agrees- Wait, why are you here, anyway?”

“I needed to talk to you, if you have a moment,” Maria admitted.

Darcy blinked. “Oh, sure.”

She followed her girlfriend out, ignoring Jane's thumbs-up of encouragement.

Maria led her to her office, where she invited her to sit down. On the coffee table, were a copper teapot and two cups.

“So... what's this about?”

Maria blushed. “I was thinking lately. Your powers have helped us through a lot of difficult situations, saved our lives more times than we can count, so I thought... Maybe you could teach them to me? Tea readings are the easiest, right?”

Darcy's eyes widened, pleased. This wasn't what she expected. “Of course! Here, I'll teach you.”

The tea was already brewed and poured, so Darcy eagerly started to introduce her to the mysteries of the tea leaves.

“Maybe show me how it's done, first?” Maria suggested, drinking from her own cup.

Darcy shrugged. “Okay. So, drain the cup on the saucer and give it to me.”

Maria did as instructed.

Darcy peered into the cup and gasped.

The cup shattered into a hundred pieces but Darcy didn't care.

At the bottom, was a silver engagement ring.

**Author's Note:**

>  **Notes on the Lore**  
>  Astragals, Tasseomancy, Hydromancy and Lithomancy are all legit way to predict the future. I felt like crystal balls and tarot cards were overused, so I went and searched for what my people (the Romans) used back in the day to make it work.  
> The gift of Prophecy was given by the gods, but there were neat little 'tricks' for the average charlatan, your garden variety 'mantis', if you will.   
> The information I got was from Mercatante's book of legends as well as Wikipedia, where I tried to stick as closely as possible to the source.  
> Note on the lithomancy, that one was freely reinterpreted to fit the story. 
> 
> And here it is guys? So many words, and yet so little for how much I care about friends?  
> I hope you enjoyed this as much as I enjoyed writing it.
> 
> Much love, stay safe, and please **let me know what you think about it**


End file.
